[MD] littl Emerson

[X Acto]

Some of Emerson's most striking ideas about 
morality and truth follow from his process 
metaphysics: that no virtues are final or 
eternal, all being “initial,” (CW2: 187); 
that truth is a matter of glimpses, not 
steady views. We have a choice, Emerson 
writes in “Intellect,” “between truth and 
repose,” but we cannot have both (CW2: 202). 
Fresh truth, like the thoughts of genius, 
comes always as a surprise, as what Emerson
 calls “the newness” (CW3: 40). He therefore 
looks for a “certain brief experience, which
 surprise[s] me in the highway or in the market,
 in some place, at some time…” (Z: 253). This 
is an experience that cannot be repeated by 
simply returning to a place or to an object 
such as a painting. A great disappointment of 
life, Emerson finds, is that one can only “see” 
certain pictures once, and that the stories and 
people who fill a day or an hour with pleasure
 and insight are not able to repeat the
 performance.

http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/emerson/